Today, it is common place to find beverage dispensing machines in various establishments such as movie theaters, convenience stores, restaurants, fast food establishments, sports venues, and the like. Many of these beverage dispensing machines have ice dispensers integrated into them, allowing a person to fill a container with ice, and then, while at the same machine, fill the container with a selected beverage.
These combination beverage and ice dispensing machines are popular, because they are convenient and efficient. Everything needed to fill a beverage container is centrally located in a single machine. A user simply needs a container and the machine provides the beverage along with the ice to cool the beverage with.
Often these machines contain many selections for dispensing beverages. As an example, a single machine might dispense water, tea, juice, lemonade, sports drink, and a variety of carbonated sodas, along with ice. Many machines are so large that they have also multiple ice dispensers, so that more than one user can be filling a cup or container with ice at a time. Some machines make the ice that they dispense, while some have a large storage area for holding and dispensing ice that is made elsewhere and then added to the machine.
The ice dispensed by these machines serves an important function, namely cooling the beverages dispensed by the machines. As the ice cools the beverages, it melts. Insulated containers slow the melting, but do not stop it. Melting ice creates water, and this water is added to the beverage. Eventually, as enough ice melts into water, the beverage containing the ice becomes diluted, or watered down, and may no longer taste like the beverage and sometimes may not have an appealing taste.